Nearly a year after Congress requested the Government Accounting Office to study the way the military responds to active duty members of the armed services requesting conscientious objector status, the GAO has issued a report that is largely worthless. 

The hope was that the study would illuminate the process that an applicant seeking status as a CO underwent in a variety of conditions and situations. However, it appears that the authors of the report did not fully grasp the concern behind the critical inquiries into the competence of military bureaucracy that initially prompted Congress to ask for the study to be conducted and compiled.  This report is truly disappointing to those of us who have been waiting nearly a year for its results.

The Center on Conscience & War lobbied Congress in December of 2006 to request that a GAO (Governmental Accountability Office) study on conscientious objection within the military be conducted. The GAO conducts studies to determine the efficiency of governmental organizations in order to better direct expenditures of tax dollars.

The report, entitled, “MILITARY PERSONNEL—Number of Formally Reported Applications for Conscientious Objectors Is Small Relative to the Total Size of the Armed Forces,” was released on 1 October 2007.

The GAO’s rigor is vital in policy and institutional review. The GAO acknowledges that its total of 425 CO applicants, who applied for CO status between 2002 and 2006, is underreported but maintains the underreporting is not vital in determining trends.  If this was, in fact, the true total, then CCW would have worked with the majority of the applicants accounted for in GAO study.  On the average, CCW has worked with nearly 50 a year.  Furthermore, we have found that the application process takes significantly longer than the GAO finding that the process lasts an average of 7 months. We therefore regard these findings dubiously.

The insufficiency of the report’s content, a deficit attributable to the neglect in counting those who failed to complete the entire process, conspicuously fails to answer one of the initial queries: What happens when someone applies for conscientious objector status?  To this end, Congress requested that the report examine “the number of all applications for status as a military conscientious objector,” and not merely those who successfully completed the military conscientious objector process. If for no other reason, the report is unable to accurately reflect trends of those who apply.  The report only reflects trends of those who completed the process.

There is no question that many CO applicants were not counted in this report or reflected in its determination of trends.  Some of the most visible and well known conscientious objectors to the Iraq war are not counted by the GAO.  For example, Camilo Mejia, who refused to return to Iraq because of his beliefs as a CO, was court-martialed and convicted of desertion. Since the Army stopped processing his CO application as result of his court martial, his application was not counted in the GAO’s statistics for the Army. Others, who receive another discharge during the CO application process, are also among the uncounted. Because the GAO did not expand the scope of the study to meaningfully address the concerns of the queries, the statistical inaccuracy of the military's current reporting policy remains unaddressed.

While this report does provide some statistics about COs that may prove useful, it seems to have lost or inadequately considered the focus of the concerns leading to the study. By focusing on the military's statistics on CO applications that were approved or denied, the report failed to address the issue that prompted the request for the study.  The GAO failed to collect what was expected to be its most useful data of the study: What happens to those who apply for CO status and then never make it up the chain of command to a final decision by the military? It is at the core of our work to serve this conscientious person who cannot participate in war, who falls between the cracks of a military bureaucracy predisposed towards blindness on beliefs of conscience. The report acknowledges that this information is difficult to obtain, then glosses over the problematic aspects of providing meaningful data.  Instead, it states that the information it does gather is useful for determining trends.  However, such incomplete data renders any such trend meaningless and irrelevant.

The study was to look at data collected from the Armed Forces during calendar years 2002 through 2006.  The GAO was asked to determine  (1) trends in the number of conscientious objector applications for the active and reserve components, (2) how each component administers its process for evaluating conscientious objector applications, and (3) whether, upon discharge, conscientious objectors are eligible for the same benefits as other former service members. The  data used in this report came from official military channels such as The Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) and each component of the Armed Forces.

The report provides the demographic inform about those whose applications completed the process, including age, sex, rank, and occupation. Using officially reported data, the GAO determined that during calendar years 2002 through 2006 the active and reserve components of the Armed Forces processed 425 CO applications completely, with the Army having the highest number of applicants for conscientious objector status. Completed applications for CO status rose during the period of 2002-2004 and dropped significantly during 2005-2006. Of these 425 completed applications, 53% were approved and 44% were denied.

However, the report gives no additional insight into who applies for CO status, why some of the applications are never fully processed, or how frequently this failure happens. 

This report fails to answer three of the question from Congress: (1) trends in the number of conscientious objector applications for the active and reserve components (2) how each component administers its process for evaluating conscientious objector applications, (3)  reasons given for denials. The first two items still need to be officially investigated outside reliance on official statistics to honestly assess the total number of CO applicants and the strengths and weakness of each military branch in the processing of conscientious objector claims.  The third item was not address at all in the report.

The Winter Reporter for Conscience’ Sake will contain a detailed analysis of the report.  The report can itself be found at http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-1196.

But in the mean time, the Center encourages you to ask that your Congressional members demand a proper GAO study that legitimately addresses these concerns, one that takes into account those who apply for CO status, and not merely those who are granted it, the application of the regulations that exist and the basis for the denials.

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